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philosophical degeneracy
Focused as I have been on issues in continental thought, I have not read as much in the analytic tradition as I should, and hence I am often late to books I probably should have read a long time ago. Read more…
Deleuze
From Normative to Problematizing Semantics
In my previous posts on Brandom, I may have come across as unduly critical, or as dismissive. That couldn’t be further from the truth. There is much that I find in Brandom’s work that is important, and that I will continue to draw from. In my previous posts I have been homing in on the differend as I see it between the positions I am working through and those developed by Brandom. Those differences have only been put forward in a rough and ready manner – this is, after all, just a working blog – and thus I’ve been thankful for comments from Pete of the deontologistics blog (his comments can be found here). They have forced me to clarify some of my points further. Before wrapping up on Brandom I want to list a few more thoughts that seem to be in need of further development. I’ll begin with where I most agree with Brandom.
David Lewis
reculer pour mieux sauter
Whether knowingly drawing from Nietzsche’s claim or not, from Human All-too-Human, which asserts that ‘He who strays from tradition becomes a sacrifice to the extraordinary; he who remains in tradition is its slave. Destruction follows in any case’, David Lewis’s Read more…
Dialetheism
Spinoza, appetites, and inferentialism
Appetite, as Spinoza makes clear, is nothing but our striving to persevere in our being, and this striving, “as related to the mind and body together, it is called appetite” (3P9S). As related to our body, therefore, our appetite is the striving to persevere in a given proportion of motion and rest. Spinoza refers to this striving as the “actual essence of the thing” (3P7), as opposed to the formal essence of the thing which is “the essence of each thing insofar as it exists and produces an effect, having no regard to its duration” (4Preface). The formal essence, or our proportion of motion and rest, is independent of its duration in the face of external objects, objects which could, if they caused our body to lose this proportion, kill the body (Note Spinoza’s claim, in the Short Treatise (I/53): ‘…if other bodies act on ours with such force that the proportion of motion and rest cannot remain 1 to 3 [for example], that is death, and a destruction of the soul…’). The formal essence of the body is the idea of the body as comprehended under the attribute of extension, in contrast to the actual essence of the body that has durational existence. Understood in the context of other bodies, that is actually rather than formally, our striving to maintain the proportion of motion and rest is a striving in the face of external differences (that is, other objects). One of the functions or effects of our appetites, therefore, is to select against excessive differences, to filter and navigate relations in order to ‘maintain the proportion of motion and rest’. Such a selection process is simply part and parcel of the striving to persevere in one’s own being with its proportion of motion and rest. God, on the other hand, as absolutely indeterminate, self-caused substance is the infinite enjoyment of existing that is the affirmation of all differences, or as what Deleuze refers to in Spinoza’s Ethics as the ‘logic of purely affirmative difference and without negation.’ Since God is not absolutely indeterminate substance in potentia, but in actu, and because God does not have to select against difference (i.e., there is nothing lacking in God), God is the most perfect being. Finite and determinate beings, however, must select against difference if they are to persevere in their being. This is its appetite, its proper goal and end. At the same time, however, it is not clear what differences we must select against, or how much we can endure and still persevere in our being in the face of differences. It is not known in advance what a body can do. Consequently, through processes of experimentation and learned association we can become more perfect; that is, the more difference we do not have to select against, the more perfect we become; and it is in this light that Spinoza argues, in 3P12, for the existence of ideas that “aid the body’s power of acting.” By arguing for the effectiveness of such ideas, Spinoza is not being inconsistent with his earlier claims that the “decisions of the mind are nothing but the appetites.” To the contrary, the decisions of the mind which aid the body’s acting by selecting against difference, or by reducing difference to a common, known form, is nothing but the appetite itself, or our striving to persevere in our being.
Hume
Parrots and Concepts
In one of his favorite examples, Robert Brandom points out that while a parrot may very well respond differentially to colors, and even say “red” when presented with a red swatch, the parrot is nonetheless responding much as a thermometer does when it detects temperature changes and responds appropriately by turning on the heater. What is missing in both cases, according to Brandom, is the ‘practical mastery of the inferential articulation in which grasp of conceptual content consists.’ (Articulating Reasons 162). In other words, although the parrot can identify the swatch as red she cannot then go on and use this as a reason for inferring that it is colored, that it is not green, a squirrel, etc. A parrot cannot participate in the game of giving and asking for reasons, and thus they lack the use of concepts.
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Intellectual Mitosis
One does not have to do more than a cursory review of intellectual history to find intellectual bifurcations everywhere. There’s nominalism vs. realism, rationalism vs. empiricism, analytic vs. continental, and so on. 
Earlier this month at the Claremont Conference Steven Shaviro nicely articulated the bifurcation between his position and Graham Harman’s. Whereas the problem for Harman is how objects can enter into contact and communication with one another, a problem he solves with his notions of vicarious causation and allure, the problem for Shaviro is one of how to break free from the incessant web of contacts and relations, how to get some elbow room as Shaviro put it (citing Whitehead). In Priest’s book in contradiction, which I discussed here in yesterday’s post, he highlights the early modern bifurcation between the continuous and the discrete (a bifurcation that of course predates early modern thought and is not exclusive to the western tradition). Priest signals Leibniz and Hume as emblematic of this bifurcation. In a response Leibniz wrote to a letter of Malebranche, Malebranche arguing for his occasionalist position (that is, coming down in favor of the discrete), Leibniz puts forth what Priest calls the “Leibniz Continuity Condition.” Citing Leibniz:
When the difference between two instances in a given series or that which is presupposed can be diminished until it becomes smaller than any given quantity whatever, the corresponding difference in what is sought or in their results must of necessity also be diminished or become less than any given quantity whatever. Or to put it more commonly, when two instances or data approach each other continuously, so that one at last passes over into the other, it is necessary for their consequences or results (or the unknown) to do so also).
Dialetheism
Dialetheism
Having just finished Graham Priest’s book, in contradiction, a book central to the logical tradition Priest calls dialetheism, I’ve decided to post some thoughts to the blog. Logic is not my area of specialization, nor do I have much to say at the moment about how Priest puts dialetheism to use in reformulating classical logic and semantic theory, but there are some lines of convergence between dialetheism and the metaphysical project I’m engaged in at the moment. Stated baldly, dialetheism accepts that some contradictions are true, or some statements such as the liar’s paradox have two truth values, true and false (hence the term dialetheism); and this position is one I have echoed in various places in my published writings by referring to both/ands, paradoxa, and double articulation. There is a crucial difference, however: whereas I begin my understanding of both/and, paradoxa, and double articulation through a reading of Deleuze, Priest begins with Hegel, and in particular with Hegel’s account of motion. Priest cites Hegel:
[M]otion itself is contradiction’s immediate existence. Something moves not because at one moment of time it is here and at another there, but because at one and the same moment it is here and not here.
A true account of motion, therefore, implies that something both is and is not, or it implies a contradiction. Deleuze, by contrast, rejects Hegelian contradiction because it places difference in subservience to identity, to the identities that constitute the contradictory pair: “α ∧ not-α.” A both/and is thus not a difference subservient to both α and not-α but rather it is the forward-slash, “/”, the “and” between identities that involves a difference deeper than any contradiction – it is the transcendental condition for such contradictions. This is the project Deleuze calls transcendental empiricism and which I detail in my book Deleuze’s Hume.
Deleuze
Life and mentality
I want to second Graham Harman’s point about the usefulness of Shaviro’s most recent post. I am intrigued in particular by Shaviro’s following claim: Whitehead is not a vitalist — he doesn’t believe everything is alive. But he does argue Read more…
Uncategorized
Some thoughts on emptiness
Following up on my earlier post and Skholiast’s helpful comment and post, along with Timothy Morton’s own comments and posts, I’ve been thinking through numerous issues and will post a few tentative thoughts, more for the sake of dialogue and/or Read more…
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How to sleep correctly
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feh3wPk3oCo Having taught Nagarjuna recently in my intellectual history class, I’ve begun rethinking the non-dualist approaches of Hindu and Buddhist thought, connecting this in turn to the work of Graham Priest and Deleuze. In this context I’ve finally taken the Read more…